Kind: Articles
Traditional long form content: a post with an explicit title and body.
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Jimmy, Start Your Engine
Here's a photo I took this afternoon especially for Jimmy:
It's a pity he won't be around this weekend to make the most of this exciting new addition to our irregular weekly Power Grid face-off. -
Cerrie Burnell - All About Me
This morning, I saw the BBC News Magazine article about Cerrie Burnell, who's apparently a children's television presenter (I'd never heard of her before, but that doesn't mean anything - I can't remember the last time I watched any kids' TV). The article centres on the fact that Cerrie was born without a right hand …
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My Last Month And A Bit
So needless to say, I've been busy! The giveaway might have been that I haven't blogged much - here's a short summary of some of the things I've gotten up to:
Fake Christmas
Yeah, it really has been a while. So we had a "Fake Christmas": this year - well, last year, I suppose - many of … -
Sleepless? Priceless!
Time for this iteration of a software project: 4 months
Time left after the client changed their mind about the "must have" requirements: 2 months
Amount of sleep within the last 40+ hours: 4 hours
Number of JOIN clauses in an eleventh-hour SQL statement that suddenly fixes everything: 12 (LEFTies, RIGHTies, … -
A "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" Moment
Remember Let Loose? They reached #2 in the singles chart back in 1994 with Crazy For You? (you'll remember it when you hear the chorus, I promise) Turns out that since disappearing off the face of the Earth, the guitarist has been running a fabulous little bed-and-breakfast in a tiny village in Essex.
He didn't look … -
Economnomnomics
Here's an idea: what if bills came with a sweet treat, like a lollipop or something. Or perhaps if the bill itself was printed on editle paper, like ricepaper, using a food dye-based ink. Aside from the improved biodegradability of the paper, it'd also make you look forward to opening your bills and nibbling at …
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Fight My Battles For Me
Just a quick announcement to plug an awesome album now purchasable on a CD in a shiny case: Fight My Battles For Me by Pagan Wanderer Lu. You can buy it for a tenner at the online store on old-school optical media.
My copy arrived this morning.
It's full of re-recorded versions of a lot of PWL … -
What Does This Bug Report Mean?
A bug report just came in from a client I'm responsible for at work. It reads:
...Main menu - home page - The 'g' of outstanding debts is permanently underlined.
Correct.
I'm not even sure what this message means. It looks like the client is telling me that the letter 'g' at the end of the … -
HttpOnly Session Cookies using ActiveRecordStore in Rails 2.2
If you're using CookieStore to manage sessions in your Ruby on Rails application, Rails 2.2 provides the great feature that you're now able to use HTTPOnly cookies. These are a great benefit because, for compatible web browsers, they dramatically reduce the risk of a Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attack being able to be used to …
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The Fife Diet from Kamikaze Cookery
I've been following Kamikaze Cookery (three geeks doing cookery... with science!) for a while now, and it's got some real potential, but what really sold me on it was their recent series on the Fife diet (yeah, I know, it's been out for ages, but I've been busy so my RSS reader's been brim-full and …
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Kissing At Midnight
In a fleeting thought, as I passed the greengrocer hanging our mistletoe outside his shop this morning, I found myself thinking about the unusual situation I'm in, in that I'll this year be spending New Year's Eve with both of mygirlfriends.
Who do I kiss at midnight?
Thankfully, the solution is clear - this year at least … -
'Nena' - Christmas Comes Early For Dan
I thought I'd say a little bit about my new home desktop computer, because it occurs to me that I hadn't said anything about it yet.
Dualitoo, my PC of the last few years, kicked the bucket on Friday a few weeks back, at a most inopportune time - I was due to write heaps of … -
OMG Child Pr0n (or is it?)
What a mess this is turning into! I am of course referring to the UK-wide internet censorship of a Wikipedia page (the one about the Scorpions album, Virgin Killer - if that last link doesn't work, you're among those affected).
The thinking is, according to the Internet Watch Foundation, that the cover of the 1976 album … -
Environmental Awareness and Yes, I'm Still Busy
The Technium's just hosted a seminar on environmental awareness. Walking past the conference room a few minutes ago, I noticed that the folks running the event had managed to leave running the projector and all of the lights, despite the fact that it had ended some time ago. Ah, the irony.
Went to a céilidh at … -
LiveJournal-to-Google Reader v2.0
I've just (finally) gotten around to releasing a brand new version of my LiveJournal-to-Google Reader proxy server, which makes it possible to easily read your LiveJournal friends' "friends only" posts in your Google Reader account (or whatever other RSS reader you use that doesn't normally make this easy).
I've announced the new version on the new …